The Crown had little choice. Without the two witnesses, the case weakened to the point of possible collapse.

The compromise was Peters could walk out of custody Monday after months behind bars, rather than a possible lengthy prison sentence had he been convicted.

Peters, 23, an indigenous man with a six-page criminal record, ended up pleading guilty to one count of possessing a firearm while prohibited and was given time served after Superior Court Justice Ian Leach accepted a joint submission from the Crown and the defence.

His sentence was time served, the equivalent of 10 ½ months. The other five gun charges Peters faced were withdrawn by the Crown.

This was a break for Peters, who was brought into court both in handcuffs and leg shackles.

It was Leach who took heat from Stratford’s mayor and women’s groups last month after accepting a joint submission from the Crown and the defence of a fine and probation in the case of Chad Bogle, 39, known as Bogle the Clown, after Bogle pleaded guilty to obtaining sexual services. The victim was a 25-year old mentally challenged woman.

What was lost in the Stratford hue-and-cry was that Leach had very little wiggle room once the joint submission was proposed.

Both the Peters and the Bogle cases ended with pleas that salvaged a criminal conviction from trials that had fragile evidence.

Leach made clear in his reasons why he agreed to the plea deal. An “uniformed person,” he said, might see the position as “overly lenient.”

But a “fully informed member of the public,” he said, would understand there might not have been any convictions at all after trial, given that the Crown had lost two witnesses that were key in the case.

Peters was arrested last September following a confrontation at a Wharncliffe Road address where the mother of his young child lived and where he had an argument with a man and a woman over rent.

Peters, said assistant Crown attorney Elizabeth Wilson, removed the rifle from a guitar case and showed it to the people. No shots were fired.

Police later recovered the weapon from the garage at the address.

Wilson explained the problems with the main witnesses. The man is wanted on other charges and his whereabouts is unknown. The police found the woman at her home Monday, but she refused to come to court unless authorities had a warrant and she made it clear she had some memory problems.

Wilson told Leach there would have been problems proving the charge if Peters hadn’t pleaded guilty.

Peters’ defence lawyer Gordon Cudmore told Leach while Peters’ criminal record is “not enviable,” he had family support and wants to change his life.

Peters is under a lifetime weapons ban imposed after an armed robbery conviction a year ago and it turns out a fragile Crown case gave him a break then, too.

Peters pleaded guilty to a violent gunpoint robbery of a variety store in November 2015 where, armed with an imitation firearm, he hit the clerk on the head, took his wallet and $150 from the cash register, plus an unknown quantity of cigarettes.

He was on the lam for months before he was arrested. But all the evidence on which the Crown had to rely was one fingerprint on a garbage bag.

He pleaded guilty a week before his trial would have started. The Crown said the case was “challenging” to prove.

His sentence then was two years, or time served.

After accepting the joint submission, that judge told Peters he hoped he would “set an example” for his child.

Peters echoed his hope to change his ways when he addressed Leach.

“I can see I made some bad decisions…..Right now I’m trying to change all that for my son and my family.”

The guilty plea, Leach said “has significant weight” in satisfying the public’s interest in the case.

Leach told Peters he was “fortunate the victims didn’t attend today” because he would have been facing at trial and prison.

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